The main purpose of consumer utilization of disposable absorbent articles such as diaper, training pants, sanitary napkins, pantiliners, and adult incontinence articles is to absorb and contain body exudates. Given this purpose, it is quite often the case that such body exudates escape the boundaries of the article as a result of leakage from a point where the article contacts the skin or from seepage through the material that makes up the absorbent article. The latter instance is often caused by the inability of the materials of the article to serve as effective barriers to such bodily fluids.
The undesirable effects of leakage and/or improper containment, difficult cleanup, and/or residual skin contamination are especially evident with regard to fecal matter deposited in a diaper. Feces contained in the diaper can harm the skin of the wearer over time and feces leaking from the diaper almost invariably presents unpleasant, messy clean-ups. Thus, several attempts have been made to add features to diapers such as barriers, pockets, spacers, transverse barriers, apertured topsheets and the like to limit the movement of the fecal material across the topsheet and/or to better confine the fecal matter in the diaper. Such attempts have been generally unsuccessful because they fail to address the fundamental causes of these problems (i.e., the properties of feces) and, because of their cost and complexity. Further, many of the means for isolating or containing feces are directed to fecal material with certain physical properties (e.g., viscosity, free water content and particle size) and are not effective with exudates with physical properties outside a very small range.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide an absorbent article with improved low surface energy fluid management capabilities, particularly for feces management. Further, it would be advantageous to provide an economical disposable article with the ability to minimize the negative effects of feces or other viscous bodily waste on the wearer or the caregiver. It would also be advantageous to provide an article which is designed to chemically or physically interact with materials making up the article and in order to reduce the amount of leakage and/or seepage that may occur.